Ever since I heard on YouTube, quite some time ago, a tantalising
excerpt - the first movement, I think - from the Vasari Singers’
première of Gabriel Jackson’s Requiem, which they
commissioned, I’ve been keen to hear it in full and for
a recording to arrive. Here it is. I’m a keen admirer
of Jackson’s vocal music. I’ve heard quite a lot
of it and he seems to me to be a fine and imaginative composer
of choral music and one, moreover, with a discriminating eye
for texts and the ability to marry words and his music most
effectively.
Of his Requiem, which is for unaccompanied choir, like all the
pieces on this disc, he writes that his initial intention was
“to combine the solemn, hieratic grandeur of the great
Iberian Requiems with something more personal, more intimate
even, that could reflect the individual, as well as the universal
experience of loss.” He’s interspersed words from
the Latin Mass for the Dead with “poems from other cultures
and spiritual traditions so as to embrace a more wide-ranging
perspective on human mortality than the traditional Christian
one.” Thus we find four sections from the Latin Mass -
the Introit, Gradual, Sanctus/Benedictus and ‘Lux aeterna’
- juxtaposed with words from such diverse authors as an Australian
Aborigine poet, Walt Whitman, a Japanese samurai warrior and
an eighteenth-century Mohican chief. If all that sounds like
an eclectic mix that may be the case but Jackson has integrated
his texts most effectively.
The opening ‘Requiem aeternam I’ opens with a plainchant
intonation and frequently you can glimpse - or sense - plainchant
in the background during the four movements that set texts from
the Mass. As is usual with Jackson, his textures are consistently
fascinating and also very clear - and Jeremy Backhouse and his
fine choir also ensure clarity through the quality of the singing.
One thing I like very much about Gabriel Jackson is his respect
for the human voice. He challenges his singers and he employs
some vocal effects - such as syllabic repetition and aleatoric
writing - yet he never writes anything that comes unnaturally
to a singer, nor does he make unreasonable demands that produce
ugly sounds. Indeed, luminosity of texture and sheer beauty
of invention and sound are among the chief impressions that
I fancy any listener to this Requiem will take away from it.
Jackson is modest too. By this I mean that he doesn’t
seek to make the listener think how clever he is - though a
lot of the music is indeed clever, in the sense that it’s
technically accomplished. Rather, he puts his music at the service
of the words. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the
sixth of the work’s seven movements, ‘Peace, my
heart’. Here Jackson sets some words by Rabindranath Tagore
(1881-1941). The words are very beautiful in themselves and
Jackson writes “the best a composer can do is to keep
out of the way and try to give Tagore’s sublime words
the reflective glow they cry out for.” I’d say that
he’s completely successful in this aim. The music is hushed
and slow and sounds very pure with some intriguingly subtle
harmonies. For the last line - “I bow to you and hold
up my lamp to light you on your way” - Jackson’s
music suggests to me the gentle aura of a few candles burning
in the middle distance in an otherwise dark church or similar
building. This movement - the work’s ‘In Paradisum’?
- contains music that is particularly gentle and radiant and
the Vasari Singers give a super performance of it. In truth,
the whole work is, for the most part, gentle and radiant, though
there’s more overt energy in the Sanctus, which sounds
like a rippling, light-footed dance. The standard of performance
is extremely high. This is music in which I suspect there are
no hiding places; it demands total concentration, accuracy of
intonation and complete control of sustained vocal lines. Yet
it seems to me that the Vasari Singers rise to all the challenges
of the score and surmount them. Listening to this performance
you suspect that the work means a lot to them; it certainly
comes across that way.
It’s even more clear that there are personal associations
with I am the voice of the wind. This was commissioned
by one of the members of the choir and her husband in memory
of their daughter, a very gifted young woman who died suddenly
at the tragically young age of 24, not long after qualifying
as a doctor. Jackson set a poem which the young lady, Geraldine
Atkinson, had written at the age of thirteen. In lesser hands
this could have been mawkish but Geraldine’s poem is full
of “mercurial evanescence [and]… quiet inner strength”,
as Jackson puts it and he has enhanced it through very beautiful
music. On several occasions the male voices sing the words of
the poem while the ladies sing aleatoric figures in the background.
The effect of the ladies’ singing is to suggest the light
fluttering of wings - butterflies, perhaps. In celebrating rather
than mourning a successful young life cut short I think this
piece is highly successful in a similar way to Jonathan Dove’s
There Was a Child (review).
The remaining piece by Gabriel Jackson is In all his works.
I’ve come across this before; it was included on a recent
disc by the Choir of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh (review). The piece is scored for ATTBB. The performances,
both of which are very good, are quite distinctive and I think
the key reason is that most of the Edinburgh altos are male
while all the Vasari altos are ladies. The cutting edge of the
male altos’ tone makes the top line stand out and now
that I’ve heard a performance by a mixed choir I think
the top line is too prominent in the Edinburgh performance.
Vasari’s female altos produce a smoother sound and are
much better integrated into the overall sound. It’s been
suggested to me that the ladies invest the music with more tenderness
and I think that’s true, especially in the opening pages.
However, Jackson wrote the piece to be sung first at Canterbury
Cathedral one presumes he envisaged male altos singing the top
line. I also have the impression of slightly more spaciousness
to the Vasari performance as compared with the Edinburgh one,
which is odd since the overall timings are within a few seconds
of each other. However, as I say, both performances are very
good and it’s a wonderful piece.
The two pieces on this disc which are not receiving their first
recordings are those by Bob Chilcott and Sir John Tavener. I’m
an admirer of Chilcott’s vocal music but, to be honest,
this piece, an adaptation of Pachelbel’s tedious Canon,
is a fairly slight affair. However, it justifies its place in
the programme by virtue of the fact that it sets Oscar Wilde’s
poem, Requiescat. Tavener’s Song for Athene
needs little or no introduction and it’s been recorded
countless times, especially once it had been sung at the funeral
of Diana, Princess of Wales. I would say that the Vasari’s
rendition is up there with the best of the recordings that have
come my way; they convey the solemn spirit of the piece very
well indeed and sing it very well.
The disc concludes with When David heard, an astonishing
piece by Francis Pott. I first came across this when I was reviewing
a disc that included Eric Whitacre’s setting of the same
text. There’s much to admire in Whitacre’s setting
but I feel that it loses its way in the middle, a trap which
Francis Pott seems to me to avoid completely. Pott’s piece
is for eight-part choir and the writing sounds to me to be extremely
complex at times. From a slow, solemn start Pott builds the
music inexorably and in his writing it seems to me that he conveys
on the one hand the raw emotion of King David’s grief
and, on the other, the need for him to preserve regal dignity,
at least in public. Eventually (at 8:41), the piece achieves
a searing climax on the words “Absalom, my son”,
which sound as if they’ve been wrenched from the king’s
heart. After this the music sinks back into the hushed, grave
mood from which it first emerged. This eloquent, demanding piece
is superbly performed.
In fact all the performances on this CD are first rate. I have
the impression that this is a programme that matters
to Jeremy Backhouse and his choir. The recorded sound is very
good and the notes, which are chiefly by Gabriel Jackson and
Francis Pott about their own works, are good. This is a disc
that should be investigated by all those who are interested
in contemporary choral music.
John Quinn
Vasari Singers/Jeremy Backhouse 